This is Scientific American 62nd Science.

I'm Julia Rosen.

Got a minute?

Isaac Newton said, I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies,

but not the madness of people. He meant that while people can be

unpredictable the planets are just the opposite. They glide through space in orbits

defined by the laws of physics. But that view's been changing over time and a new study bolsters a more complex outlook.

The big finding of this paper was the discovery of the first real firm unambiguous geologic evidence to confirm this idea that the solar system is

chaotic. Stephen Myers a geoscientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

By chaotic, Myers doesn't mean that the planet zoom around wildly on random paths.

Rather, he's referring to the mathematical meaning of the word, in which the future state of a complex

system depends strongly on its initial conditions.

In this case, it means that seemingly random changes in planets

orbits can occur because of subtle gravitational interactions between objects in the

solar system.

It's also known as the butterfly effect, right?

So this is the exact same phenomena.

The idea that a butterfly flapping over the Indian ocean could influence weather patterns in North America a week later.

The idea has been proposed before, but Myers and his team found supporting evidence in a surprising place,

a rock formation in Colorado.

The formation is made up of sedimentary layers deposited

one of vast inland sea covered parts of North America.

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